1.7.13

A Metaphorical Cup of Tea: Interview with Maggi Dawn

Some of you will know that I was very privileged to become friends with Maggi whilst I trained for ordination in Cambridge. She was, in fact, someone who had endless energy and insight for me, even when she was making big life decisions for herself. A true priest...and friend.

Maggi and I left Cambridge at the same time (coincidental I assure you), me for the exotic climes of Harrow and she for the slightly sunnier shores of Yale University, where she is Professor and Priest. So when someone at the WATCH committee asked if anyone would contact Maggi to interview her about her new book, Like the Wideness of the Sea, I jumped at the chance to get in touch.

An edited version of the interview is found in OUTLOOK, the annual magazine of WATCH, which will be published this week. However, the full interview was so good that I asked if I could publish it in full on my blog here.

So, I publish it in full below, and I ask you to take a look at the work of WATCH, which works for the full equality of women and men in the church, and perhaps join us in this Kingdom work.

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1.You recently published ‘Like the
Wideness of the Sea’, a book on the Church of England’s wrangling over the
place of women as Bishops: why write this now?

Quite simply - I was asked to! The Editorial Director of Darton, Longman & Todd, whom I’ve known for many years, called
me the day after the November 2012 Synod saying that the feeling of shock and
despair was palpable in England, not only in the Church but in the public
sphere, and he wanted to publish a response within two months. The reason he
asked me was that I knew the situation from inside, but now have some distance
from it, so he was interested to know how it looked to me a year after I moved
to the States. My intent in writing was to try to avoid simply rehearsing the
same arguments again, and to look sideways at the problem, in the hopes of offering
a fresh perspective, and some ideas to find a way out of the deadlock.

2.The discussion on women in leadership
is centuries old, are we fighting a losing battle?

The discussion is old, but the context is always new – from one century
to the next, nothing stands still. And
in order to see the gospel lived out in every generation we have to allow
ourselves to see the difference between the gospel itself and the cultural
accretions that are added to it over time, so that we can rediscover God’s
freedom and salvation in every generation. That’s not to say we change the
truth to suit ourselves, but we have to be discerning enough to understand that
the gospel has been interpreted with significant social differences at
different times and places. Most Christians, for instance, no longer regard it acceptable
that the scriptures were used to justify polygamy, or the crusades, or slavery.
It is not only legitimate, but incumbent upon us to ask whether the long
history of the Church in denying women an equal place has actually been a
misinterpretation, rather than faithfulness to scripture and tradition.

This particular discussion is certainly causing conflict within the church
(and not only in the Church of England), but despite that I’m reluctant to use
“battle” imagery to describe it – because those who are entrenched in their
views that women may not be priests or bishops are, nevertheless, our brothers
and sisters in Christ. I would rather use language of hope and reconciliation.

Recently Alan Boesak visited Yale Divinity School, and talked about his
involvement in combatting racism in South Africa. He preached a brilliant
sermon, based on Genesis 25:8-9: “Abraham died… an old man, and full of
years; and was gathered to his people. And his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried
him in the cave of Machpelah.” Boesak pointed out that Ishmael was expelled from the family home half
a lifetime before this event, and had not been heard of since. For all the
inspirational things Abraham had done, this one event was far from a moment of
glory, and had wreaked havoc on many lives. For Ishmael and Isaac to be reunited to bury
their father, Isaac first had to have the grace and humility to find and invite
his brother, and Ishmael had to summon up enough grace and forgiveness to
accept the invitation. If they were ever to recover from that one, dreadful
episode in their lives, and find reconciliation, they had to bury their father together. One side cannot resolve a
conflict alone, and one side “winning” doesn’t lead to reconciliation. The past
has to be buried by both sides being prepared to face their own demons, and to
work together towards reconciliation for the sake of a better future.

It’s a story that Alan Boesak retells out of his experience in South
Africa’s journey out of apartheid, but as I listened to him I saw resonances for
other kinds of human division, including that of the Church of England’s
current conflict. If two sides of an argument are entrenched in their views,
then resolution can only come if both sides are more intent on finding a way to
live together than on insisting on their side “winning”. It’s vital that those
on either side of the argument are honest about what will or will not
constitute a just peace. But they also have to let go of any intent to “win”
against the other.

3.Would you be a priest in the Church
of England if you knew then, what you know now?

In many ways, I think everything would have gone better for me if I had
not been ordained in the Church of England. But vocational decisions are never
simply a matter of choosing what’s “best for me” – if ministry does not involve
a certain degree of self-sacrifice, it isn’t worth much.

The fact is that there are very few places in the world where women are
received on an equal footing with men, so to some extent answering a call
anywhere is going to present challenges for women. I had already been living
out a calling for a long time before the priesthood opened to women at all, and
women before me spent entire lifetimes doing the same. Currently I work in an
ecumenical context, directing a ministry that encompasses people from more than
25 different denominations, as well as people with no denominational affiliation,
and the complexities of disagreement are as much present here as anywhere. So
in some ways living within the Church of England’s impasse has equipped me to
direct this ministry with courage and creativity. Consequently, even though I
felt I had to leave the Church of England for the time being, I remain tied to
it by many threads of friendship, and with genuine gratitude for all that I
learned through serving as a priest. I wouldn’t be who I am today without those
who taught me, and those who trained and worked alongside me – even those who presented
challenges to me in the process.

I also hope that in some small way I may have contributed to the Church’s
discovery that ordaining women is just as important as ordaining men.

4.Do you think our training processes
for priesthood are ‘women-friendly’?

To some extent, but not enough. Although I think the wider point is that training
processes need re-imagining for all kinds of people. Residential training is
still largely based on the model created for training post-graduate single men
before they got married – in essence, a monastic pattern that assumes the
participants have no responsibilities outside the walls of the college. I dare
say that worked well for 22-year old single men in the 19th century,
but present day Ordinands are at all stages of life, single, married, with
children or ageing parents to care for, and a one-size-fits-all pattern of
training puts excessive stress on all kinds of people.

The modular system at Yale Divinity School is quite effective. Some
students live on site and some a hundred miles away, and single or married,
with or without family, they are integrated into college life and able to
co-ordinate a full working week with their personal lives. Each student can
choose five working days with different start-times to suit their family needs
or commuting pattern. Some opt to work three or four extended days on site
instead of five. Every day classes stop for an hour mid-morning for the main
Chapel service so no-one has to miss Chapel. It isn’t perfect, of course, but
it does allow people to establish a full and thorough training pattern that is
compatible with their personal circumstances.

5.What advice would you give young
women in particular who wonder if they should be part of the Church of England?

I tend not to “give advice” on issues like that; I listen to what an
individual is thinking and feeling, encourage them to keep their eyes wide open
to the whole picture, and wherever possible not make big decisions in a hurry,
or in a state of distress. If people are considering changing Church allegiance
it’s important to remember there is no perfect church; it might be right to
stay, it might be better to leave. But while we can stand beside people while
they make those decisions in the end the decision has to be made by the person
themselves, not merely on the advice of someone else.

6.Would you do anything differently in
your own journey?

There are plenty of things I think I could have done better! But I always
remember these words of wisdom - from a philosopher, and a singer: Kierkegaard
once wrote that you can only live life forwards, and Piaf sang, Je ne regrette rien! None of us has the
benefit of foresight, and we would probably all do some things differently if
we knew back then what we know now. But it never ceases to amaze me that as we
make peace with our own lives, the future opens up in new and surprising ways.
I guess that’s in part what grace is all about.

7.What is your first love?

I can’t help but think of that Sunday School joke where a class is asked
a question, “What’s small and grey, has a long furry tail, and eats nuts?” – to
which a child answers, “I know the answer ought to be Jesus, but it sounds like
a squirrel to me.”

The answer to this question has to be God, right? But if you mean on a
personal, inspirational level, then leaving aside God and my family and
friends, who are always the foundation of everything for me, the answer is
music. I could sing before I could walk, and began playing when I was five.
Music feels like my natural language.

8.Who has been your biggest
inspiration?

Musically, I go back and back to Daniel Lanois, Richard Thompson, Paul
Simon, Neil Finn, Joni Mitchell – all really groundbreaking writers. For in-depth
reading, Coleridge and others who write about him remain my big inspiration,
and I’m returning to write about him later this year. Most of all, though, it’s
personal relationship that inspires me – those people who have walked with me
for many years through life and work and music, and still have the capacity to
generate hope, laughter and new ideas.

9.What has been your deepest joy in
ministry?

I think daily joy comes from building great relationship with the people
I work with, and I have been outstandingly lucky in encountering many, many
people who have filled my working life with friendship and laughter. But that
“deep” thing? Whether it’s while I’ve been sitting with someone on their
deathbed, or creating liturgy, or playing music, or academic teaching, the joyful
moment always comes when I see some connection happen that is beyond me: some
sense of peace, a light going on in someone’s eyes, or the moment when
something “clicks”. It seems to me that we can create context for others, and faithfully
walk beside them, but when the true moment of inspiration comes it’s not
something we can make happen – it’s the work of God. Sometimes, of course, we
work for years with people and never see things come together for them, but now
and then there we’re lucky enough to witness those brilliant moments.

10.Have you enjoyed moving across the Pond?
Do you miss the CofE? England?

I am genuinely glad I made this move, although it hasn’t been easy at
all. Before I left England someone said to me, “it will take two whole years to
feel at home, so be prepared to do a lot of hanging in there”. Sure enough,
moving abroad was exhausting, lonely and expensive, but we are nearly two years
in now and my son and I are both beginning to flourish in our new context. We
have really loved cultivating a sense of adventure about this enormous country,
being able to climb hills and walk within a few feet of wild deer or birds
we’ve never seen before. There’s a lot to love about America!

The hardest thing about the move has been missing friends and family in
the UK. Thank goodness for internet technology which does keep us connected,
but a Skype conversation isn’t the same as a leisurely supper. Something I had
forgotten from last time I lived abroad is that you miss the easy familiarity
of knowing how everything works, and of being established in a community. I
miss walking down any street in Cambridge and seeing 10 people I know, and being
45 minutes from London and 4 hours from Paris. It’s hard work starting all over
again, but my son and I have determinedly kept our sense of humour, and we are
gradually finding a new home here, and some new friends too.

11.In your book you speak of being amazed by the productivity that comes
from not having to question yourself constantly: what does that ‘look’ like?

I couldn’t have imagined how different this would be. It wasn’t until I
went to work every day and did NOT find an underlying suspicion about whether I
was competent, just because I am a woman. This is not a denominational issue;
it comes from working in a University that has done a huge amount of work for
20 years and more to ensure that women are treated on the same footing as men
in the professional space.

What it looks like is hard to describe, but I find that in many of the
small details of my working day – such as writing an email, preparing a paper
for a committee, speaking up in a Deans’ meeting, or giving directions to my
team – I work faster on these background tasks because I don’t have to
second-guess underlying sexist responses or misunderstandings. And I can
delegate easily; people don’t assume I should be doing certain tasks just
because I’m a woman. Consequently I have more energy and time for the work I am
here to do – academic teaching, writing, creating liturgy, and working on the
formation of student ministers in the liturgical sphere. At the end of a normal
working day I am not drained and exhausted, and still have the energy to write
or play music or paint.

12.Is the CofE going to run itself aground?
Is the deadlock fatal or is there really hope?

One of the difficulties the CofE faces with an issue like this is that
institutional processes take months and years, so promises seem to be being
shelved or broken, and meantime people are losing faith in the Church. I’ve
worked in large and small institutions before, and I understand that processes
run far slower when the bureaucracy is large and complex. All the same, there
is a case, when an institution’s processes are threatening to strangle it, to
find a way to cut through the red tape. Maybe this is one of those times.
Institutions may be complicated but they are not powerless.

I do feel concerned when people say that we should just wrap up this
issue and get on with “what the gospel is really
about”. In fact, I think this is mistaken thinking. At the heart of this issue there
is at least some degree of institutional sexism, which, along with all the
other –isms and –phobias, is a matter of justice and freedom for real people.
That is – in part, at least – what
the gospel is about. The church’s institutional sexism urgently needs to be
addressed, and it’s worth every ounce of effort to do so.

13.How do you keep going in ministry when it’s tough?

First, I stop and breathe. Thomas Merton once said that working without
stopping is a form of violence, and working without stopping is the biggest
temptation for many clergy. One of my favourite gospel moments is Matthew 13:1
– mostly in the gospels we read that Jesus went of by himself “to pray” – but
here he simply “went out and sat by the sea.” Sometimes even before you can
pray coherently, I think you need to stop, and breathe, and listen (and, as I
said in the book, by the sea is my favourite place to do that!).

Secondly, I fill parts of my life with things I love that are not
directly part of ministry. One of the reasons ministers run dry is when we “run
on empty” – and it’s so easy to fall into a pattern where we work all the time.
The truth, though, is that we are stronger, more creative, and less likely to
be overwhelmed by difficulties if to we are rested, inspired, and regularly
filled with whatever makes us tick. For me, that is a long walk with my son,
playing music, reading literature, or viewing art or theatre.

14.Does our understanding of priesthood need to change?

I’m not sure it needs to change exactly, but it does need to be
clarified, because without a clear sense of why the Church ordains anyone, it’s
easy for false ideas to grow up around the priesthood.

When I was in my early 20s I joined a group of people in my parish who
used to go and read to Bishop Lesslie Newbigin, whose eyesight was beginning to
fail. He always argued that the simplest interpretation of the ordinal was the
best one: that we are ordained to word and sacrament, nothing more, nothing
less. We certainly are not ordained to be managers or CEOs or community leaders
(even if we additionally bring some of those gifts to the church). In particular he used this as an argument against
lay presidency at the Eucharist, maintaining that the only legitimate reason to
ordain anyone is so that they preside over the sacraments. We don’t need to
ordain people in order to make them leaders or managers, nor even preachers and
pastors – anything that lay people can legitimately do is not a reason to
ordain, Newbigin argued, or it implies that ordination makes them more
important than lay people who can carry out the same tasks. A proper
understanding of ordination maintains respect for the sacraments rather than
the priests, and places priesthood in its proper relationship to the “priesthood
of all believers”, in the sense that the work of the gospel is undertaken by
the whole church, not just the clergy.

15.What is your message to our (male) bishops?

The book is the message, really. I pray for our Bishops, and keep in
touch with a number of them whom I know personally, and I don’t underestimate
the complexity of what they have to do. But I want to see them make good on their
promise to include women in their HoB meetings, and have the courage to do what
they are almost all agreed on – that we must, as soon as possible, resolve this
issue.

16.Will you return to us in the UK?

Yes! I long to come home. (Get the kettle on, Jody!) But for now I have a
deep sense of calling in this new setting, and so I think I will be working
here for a while yet.